The 611th annual urs at the Mahim dargah, will be held on December 9 and 10.
The shrine is the tomb of religious scholar Makhdum Fakih Ali Mahimi, a descendant of a trading family from Arabia who is believed to have lived between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The saint wrote several religious books in Arabic and is called the ‘Qutb-e-Kokan’. The dargah is the second-most-visited Sufi shrine in Mumbai after the Haji Ali dargah.
The urs, the death anniversary of the saint, will start on Tuesday evening with the hoisting of the national flag. The ceremony will be accompanied by a police band. A copy of the preamble to the Constitution of India mounted on the wall near the inner sanctum of the shrine. The evening’s rituals will continue till 2.45 am. The main day of the urs will be on Wednesday. The ‘Mahim Mela’, the fair after the urs, will be held between December 16 and 25.
The saint lived between CE 1372 and 1431.
One of the important traditions at the urs is the ‘sandal’ by personnel from the nearby Mahim police station who walk to the shrine bearing gifts of a chadar, a shawl to cover the tomb, and scented offerings.
The fair is a ‘gazetted mela’ as the event is listed in government gazettes from the pre-independence days. The fair started in 1910.
There is no authentic record of the Mumbai police’s connection with the urs, but it is said that police officials pray to the saint when they face a difficult investigation.
The shrine shrine houses a 600-year-old Koran written by the saint
